Delta College soccer field in need of $3.7M makeover

STOCKTON — The soccer field at San Joaquin Delta College may require a $3.7 million do-over.

Built in 2007, the field was one of the first projects completed by the college using voter-approved, taxpayer-funded Measure L bond money.

And already, the field is no longer usable, and the shrinking pot of bond money will have to be drawn from a second time, Delta officials say.

The wrong kind of grass was planted, officials said in recent meetings. The grass couldn’t be cut as low as soccer players needed it. When crews did try to mow it, the grass clumped and stopped growing.

Meanwhile, portions of the field were used for throwing events such as javelin and discus. That caused divots and overall turf degradation.

The men’s and women’s soccer teams will play their home games at the University of the Pacific this fall, while college trustees next month decide whether to relocate the field — a plan that would require removal of the majority of Delta’s public tennis courts.

About $1.6 million was budgeted to build the current faulty soccer field, according to college documents. The relocation would cost $3.7 million.

Those numbers may be relatively small in comparison with the $250 million bond as a whole, but as board President Taj Khan put it, “a million dollars is a million dollars.”

“I’m really upset with how we handled this project,” Khan said Friday. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, but we weren’t there (in 2007). It was a previous board and a previous administration … I can’t make a second guess as to what they were thinking.”

Indeed, many of those in leadership positions today were doing other jobs back then, and it’s not clear exactly how this all happened.

Moving the field closer to other campus sports venues was actually the original plan when the bond passed, Delta President Kathy Hart told trustees this week. But the amount of money to be spent on athletics projects was scaled back, so leaders at the time changed course. They tucked the soccer field into a more remote corner of the campus and allowed it to also be used for the javelin and other field events.

And they failed to plant preferred Bermuda grass.

“Unfortunate mistakes were made at the beginning of the bond,” Hart said Friday.

The new field would be synthetic — more expensive upfront, but cheaper to maintain, officials said. The field would be closer to restrooms and other amenities and would include bleachers, an electronic scoreboard, a press box and other features that the current field lacks.

The bad field could continue to be used for general recreation.

Delta Athletic Director Daryl Arroyo said the soccer teams need facilities that stack up with competitors. Failing to do so can harm recruiting efforts.

“And soccer is huge in this area, with the Latino population,” Arroyo said. “People love soccer. I think it’s important” to the college.

While 10 of Delta’s 15 tennis courts would be removed, the remaining five would be improved. Delta no longer has a tennis program, and its courts are not in good condition, said Peter Juarez, tennis pro at the city’s Oak Park courts.

Juarez estimated there are 60 to 70 tennis courts available to the public across Stockton.

“As a tennis player, we’d hate to see any courts taken out,” Juarez said. “I’d like to see them refurbish all of the courts and have some tennis program there.”

But, he said, five courts would probably satisfy public demand.

Khan said it shouldn’t have been difficult to build a proper soccer field, since there are thousands of them across the country.

He has often called for better management of the taxpayer-funded bond, and, indeed, Delta brought in a special consultant earlier this year to help oversee it, taking some of the burden off of administrators who have other duties.

“We need to look at and compare ourselves with a business venture, an entrepreneurial type of environment where people invest money and look at investing it properly,” Khan said. “We don’t have that kind of mentality. A million dollars is a million dollars, and we should be diligent down to the last penny.”

Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/breitlerblog and on Twitter @alexbreitler.